Can we save or reinvigorate The Railway Cup?

[thewobbler]

The easiest way to create an interest is to compress the format, then market it as a must see event rather than as a series of games.

Make it all on the one weekend, and all at Croke Park:

- A hurling semi-final on the Friday evening at 7pm
- A football semi-final on the Friday evening at 9pm
- A hurling semi-final on the Saturday afternoon at 5pm
- A football semi-final on the Saturday evening at 7pm
- The hurling final on the Sunday afternoon at 2pm
- The football final on the Sunday evening at 4pm

Create a party atmosphere around the games. Don't fill them up with tweeness like marching bands and juvenile games, instead encourage people to eat hot dogs and drink beer. Give away free stuff. Have family tickets and family stands. Basically do what Americans do at their games, most of which are events rather than sporting contests.

Sell 3 day tickets. Open up the corporate boxes. Have full souvenir programmes for the event, with accurate squad numbers, etc. Have half-price provinical jerseys on sale thrroughout the weekend, to get a bit of colour going.

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Don't muck around with the playing rules. We're trying to showcase our games, not trying to make our best players and most loyal supporters confused and bitter.

Two concessions to this though.

First, if scores are level at the end of normal time, the game coninues until either a) a team posts two consecutive scores to win outright, or b) a team scores a goal to win outright. This removes the drawn game element.

Second, if you're sent off for any offence, including two yellows, you don't play again that weekend, and nor can you be replaced in your province's squad.

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Want to make it even more interesting - put up a prize fund (and even describe it as a GPA concession!).

Limit the squads to 24 players only.

€5k a head to the winning teams (€120k per team)
€2k a head to the losing finalists (€48k per team)
€1k a head to the losing semi-finalists (€24k per team)

That gives us a total of around €430k in prize money. Throw in another €40k for putting team up across the city, and we've got €470k - so let's call it an even €500k. Which surely isn't a kick in the arse off what it costs to send 120 players over to America/Paris/Dubai in the recent attempts to internationalise the series. Except this time, there'll be gate money coming in to pay the costs.

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Do all this, then get discover ireland to sell it as a tourist event.

[Rossfan]

Heaven help us 

[Eastern_Pride]

Get Real Madrid to play.

[The Forfeit Point]

the railway cup is a fantastic competition, no way should it be gotten rid of. thank god the p!ss and moan attitude of rossfan is very much in the minority when it comes to this. you would swear roscommon has huge fish to fry come business end of championship and are too good for railway  what a fantastic place for players no matter what county they are from to showcase their ability whilst being surrounded by other top class players.
why people say ah whats the point really annoys/confuses me, if the provinces can be big in rugby why not gaa??!!
what an honour it is to play for ones province, when i was playing for the club that was a massive honour can only imagine what id feel like to be asked to represent leinster!

theres some great ideas being put out here, definitely the weekend at croker sounds good! hopefully someone sits up and takes notice

[Lecale2]

Play the semi final and final in one day at Croke. A triple header.

The first half of each match is football then the same 15 players play hurling for the second half. The winners get both the Railway Cups.

I like Wobblers idea about beer drinking but in the hurling some of the players could get hurt if they drink too much.

[Rossfan]

the railway cup is a fantastic competition, no way should it be gotten rid of. thank god the p!ss and moan attitude of rossfan is very much in the minority

Good God !!!!  Where did you crawl out from?
A competition which hasnt attracted 50,000 spectators in the last 20 years combined would suggest I'm in the 99.99999% MAJORITY when it comes to this outdated competition.